


Serpentine

by panchostokes (badwolfrun)



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016) Whump, Darts, Fever, Gen, Hurt Jack, Hurt Mac, Hurt/Comfort, Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016) Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-01-15 23:03:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21261086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfrun/pseuds/panchostokes
Summary: Mac's trapped on a roller coaster of emotions as Jack transforms into a porcupine upon stumbling onto a trap in a ruin somewhere in an undisclosed jungle.





	1. Welcome to the Jungle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [impossiblepluto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossiblepluto/gifts), [12percentplan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/12percentplan/gifts).

> Dedicated to two people who have truly been the lights of my writing life for the entire year, I do not know what I would do without either of you and your constant support, cheering and inspiration. Y'all are the ones who really wrote this fic and I love you for it. 💜💜💜
> 
> (And I hope the rest of y'all do, too!)

“You really don’t see it?”

They stood in front of an old stone arch, Mac felt the cool, moist softness of the moss under the palm of one hand, a sweaty vice grip on the machete with blistering skin in the other. He swiped the blade across the curtain of vines haphazardly, kicked his way out of the fallen entanglement of leaves. He stared into the ominous dark, heard the echoes of falling rocks scratching against the ruined structure. He inhaled deeply through his nostrils, soured with the stench of his own sweat and the pungent air. 

“Hard to see anything without a light,” Mac muttered irritably as he rummaged through his bag for his flashlight. He frowned as it took him longer than a minute to realize he must have dropped it during their previous mission. 

Jack giggled as he snapped a large branch in half, tore off a dry piece of one of the sleeves of his button down chambray to wrap around the wood. Mac provided the ignition with the lighter he luckily still had, Jack held the stick firm as it flickered into a makeshift torch. He stared into the void with a gleam in his eyes, new uncharted territory ready to be explored, though he steadied his flexing fingers, wrapping them around the gun on his thigh holster. 

“Feels like a rolling boulder is gonna come at us any second here, hoss.”

“It probably still wouldn’t be as big as your head.”

Jack chortled in mock hurt as Mac allowed a smirk to cut through the smear of mud on his face. 

“And I mean hey, you already got the Indy look going, with that messenger bag of yours, and ‘professor’ esque clothing.”

“All that’s missing is the fedora and whip,” Mac commented as they started walking into the ruins, raising an eyebrow to Jack. 

“You know, I’m a whip-cracking  _ champion,”  _ Jack drawled as they made their way through a narrow passageway, taking the lead with the light.

“So I’ve heard,” Mac murmured with a trace of sarcasm.

“From who?” Jack asked incredulously. 

“You! You only tell me at least like, once a week.” He scoffed dismissively, but with a small smile, secretly loving pulling Jack’s leg with false annoyances. He couldn’t imagine not hearing the story of how Jack triumphed over dozens of other participants with ease. 

“Yeah, well, you know what, I’ll snap off one of those vines out there and show your scrawny ass how it’s  _ done!” _

“Maybe  _ after  _ we find the chip.”

“Whatever, Dr. Jones.”

The hallway expanded, Mac walked up to Jack’s side before Jack threw out his arm to block him from going forward, his eyes taking time to adjust to the somehow even blacker darkness that lay ahead. 

“Why the hell is there a piece of modern technology in these ancient ruins anyway?” he asked his younger partner, who shrugged and ducked under Jack’s arm to keep walking.

“Place where you least expect--”

He was interrupted by a large force that knocked him off of his feet, whacking his head, which was thrown back so quickly that his neck veins extended to their limit, the top of his head bounced against his back. For a brief moment, he thought he had been decapitated.

Jack dropped the torch immediately, scooped Mac up by his armpits in mid-air from behind. His feet were planted to the ground as he allowed Mac to flounder for a second before he recovered, standing up on his own accord. 

“Ah, what the hell?” he groaned. He rubbed his throbbing temples with his thumb and forefinger, could feel something warm and slippery on--blood, perhaps, now mixing with the sweat and mud. Jack picked the torch up and confirmed, there was a large gash on his head, a steady pour seeping down, trickling over one of his eyes, tracing the profile of his nose and into his mouth. 

He tried to fumble around for the first aid kit in his messenger bag, Using the dim light of the discarded torch as Jack kept fluttering around in front of him like an insect. He batted Jack away with a non-bloodied hand as he realized that the first aid kit was gone, too. He had taken it out on the jet. 

“What  _ do  _ I have in this bag, for fuck’s sake?”

“What’s wrong?” Jack asked, picking up the torch to provide much needed light. “Oh, Jesus, Mac…”

“I’m okay, just...need some gauze or something. Left the kit on the plane.”

“Well, good thing you didn’t leave Jack Dalton on the plane.” 

Jack ripped off his other sleeve, which was long enough to wrap around Mac’s head. 

“It’s fine!” Mac protested. “See, already stopped bleeding. I think.”

“Maybe we should turn back, head to exfil--”

“No, let’s keep going, we got this far with me having a concussion already--”

“With you having a  _ what?”  _ Jack growled as he tightened the cloth around Mac’s head so tightly that he made him wince. 

“Utah,” Mac groaned. “Warehouse.”

“Seriously? We’ve talked about this, Mac, you’re supposed to  _ tell Jack when things go wrong!”  _

“Well,  _ Jack,”  _ Mac sneered with a small trace of distaste at Jack’s use of third person talk, “was a little busy--”

“Nope. Try again.”

Mac sighed, they both knew fully well that Jack would have laid down everything to go assist Mac, even at the price of the mission. 

Even a high stakes one that left the fate of the world hanging in a fragile balance. 

“We were running out of time--”

“Ehhhhhh, sorry, Mac, wrong guess. Would you like to go for double jeopardy where the scores can really change?”

“I thought we were doing an Indiana Jones thing here? Cause here you are quoting Die Hard. Then again, if I’m Dr. Jones that really would make you...a-a just as equal bad-ass like McClane, cause there’s  _ no way  _ you’re a sidekick like Short Round--” Mac began to ramble before Jack put a finger on his lips.

“Are you trying to deflect with a discussion of Indy vs McClane cause, buddy…” 

Jack gripped Mac’s shoulder firmly, stared him dead in the eyes with a straight face before the tense silence broke with a noise of pure childlike giddyness from a glowing smile. 

“It’s workin’.”

“Didn’t think you’d buy it, to be honest.”

“Faster we get that dumb-ass chip, faster we get you outta here and into Medical where you belong, and nothing makes the time go by faster than a good ol’ fashion talk about the greatest action movies of all time.”

“I think I’d prefer it if you sang instead.”

“You asked for it!” 

“I take it back.”

“Too late!”

They continued their trek through the darkness, and Jack began to hum the opening riff to a song that caused Mac to surf through a mental Jack Dalton jukebox in his head, searching for the name to the song, before he heard the opening lyric.

_ “Welcome to the jungle, we got fun n’ games!” _

“Oh, how fitting,” Mac snarled. His blinks were getting longer and longer, he took a sip out of his rapidly draining canteen as Jack continued the song, in a bit of a purposefully off-key tone, just to get under Mac’s skin a little though certain parts of the song he sang with full, true effort.

_ “Watch it bring you to your, Knees, knees! Ooh, I-coughDON’Tcough-wanna watch you bleed!” _

The corners of Mac’s mouth dared to curve up at Jack’s bit of improvisation, though he knew it was a dig at him.

“I told you, Jack, I’m  _ fine,”  _ he reassured his friend. They found another narrow passageway, this time Mac led the way, having swiped the torch out Jack’s hand. 

_ “...We take it day by day, if you want it you're gonna bleed, but it's the price you pay…” _ Jack emphasized the lyrics with his eyebrows raised in an “don’t say I didn’t tell you so” warning.

_ “In the jungle, Welcome to the jungle! Feel my, my, my, my serpentineeeee,” _ Jack waggled behind Mac. He tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention, Mac spun around to find Jack grinding enthusiastically, which shattered Mac’s attempt at keeping a serious facade and he slipped into a small fit of laughter before they walked into a large room with rotted tiled flooring. He could see bones piled in the corner, impaled on spikes, dilapidated pillars lined the walls. The room was seemingly empty, though he could just barely see the outline of a small chest resting in an alcove on the other side of the room.

Jack immediately sprung in front of Mac, blocking him with his arm once more, though he continued to sing. 

_ “You can have anything you want, but you better not take it from me…” _

Another warning, to tread carefully. There was already one booby trap, who’s to say there wasn’t another?

“Don’t see any large boulders, I think we’re safe,” Mac assessed, seeing nothing in the dim light that could pose any threat. He began to walk straight forward, towards the alcove as Jack began to hop between the tiles that were still intact.

Still. Singing.

_ “You know where you are?”  _

“Yes, Jack, I do,” Mac answered in a deadpan without hesitation, almost making Jack corpse before he raised the pitch of his voice.

_ “You're in the jungle, baby! You're gonna dieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” _

Jack jumped onto one last tile, prancing across Mac and landing on one foot, strumming an imaginary guitar that was immediately broken upon the sound of a faint  _ click  _ that somehow sounded louder than their own breath. 

“Jack... _ Don’t. Move.” _


	2. Statue + Dart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mac disarms the pressure plate. Or so he thinks.

They were both frozen in a drenched-in-dread filled sixty seconds, ears perked to hear the sounds of dangerous ticking, eyes on the lookout for for blinking lights warning of an explosion that would never come. 

“Just...keep...still,” Mac breathed. “Don’t panic.”

“‘M not,” Jack muttered through shallow breaths. Mac walked over with the torch, carefully got on his hands and knees to examine the trap with the limited, flickering source of light. 

“I don’t see any wires that might indicate it’s an explosive…”

“Oh, well  _ that’s  _ a relief…” Jack swallowed down memories of another pressure plate, another fatal happenstance of stepping on a trap that was not meant for him. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Again.

“But, I’m not ruling it out.” 

“Yeah, of course not,” Jack muttered with an exaggerated expression that made Mac look up at him, holding up his hands to signal to him to  _ take it easy, Dalton.  _ Jack bit down his tongue, held back any more loose motions, asserted a rigidity in his body stemming from his planted foot. “You’re just sort of...hard- _ wired  _ for those sorts of things.”

“Really? Now?”

“What?”

“The  _ puns _ ,” Mac groaned as he got up. Jack had to fight back the instinct to risk moving and assisting Mac as he stumbled forward a few steps. 

“You okay there, hoss?” Jack asked in a husky whisper instead. “You don’t seem to be firing on all four cylinders, there.”

“I’m fine. Let me see if I can find what this is supposed to set off.”

“Just...be careful, alright?” he squeaked in a higher voice than he intended. “Wouldn’t help if both of us became statues.”

Mac silently agreed as he slowly made his way to the perimeter of the room, waved a hand over the grimy walls as he circled the room.

“Kinda like that quicksand incident, remember that one?” 

“Not so fondly…”

“We got out of it, though.”

“Yeah,  _ barely.” _

“We’ll get out of this, too.”

“Glad to see you’re so optimistic.”

“Why, what’d you find?”

Mac reached his fingers into one of the honeycombed holes angled on the wall above his head. He grunted as he nearly poked the tip of a rusted needle, before pulling it out slowly, feeling a slight resistance. He jimmied it in and out, testing to see what sort of mechanism they were dealing with before he removed the dart entirely, brought it over for Jack to see.

“These are primed and ready to fire, I’m guessing step one of the trap is stepping on the plate, which arms the trap. Step two is stepping off, essentially pulling the trigger.” 

“Well,” Jack gulped. “Guess I won’t step off, then. How are you gonna... _ can _ you disarm it?”

“Course I can,” Mac half-smiled. “Just keep talking while I figure this out.” 

“Glad to see  _ you’re  _ so optimistic now, buddy. Was getting kinda worried there for a second. You’ve saved my life more times than I can count, if I had a nickel for every time you got us out of a sticky situation, I’d be able to retire both of us, and maybe even Riley, too! Could finally go to Vegas--”

“Where you would spend all of our hypothetical retirement money?”

“Hush, boy, you keep workin', while I keep dreamin'! Nah, for reals, man, I’m talking we maybe finally take that bro-cation we keep jabbering about, We wouldn’t spend all of the retirement fund, just a little, like, I don’t know, five percent or somethin’. I’ll have you know that Jack Dalton’s got quite the poker face, I could easily triple our initial investment, we’d be staying at the fanciest five-star hotel on the Strip, become the talk of the town, get ourselves into some sort of trouble that you’d get us out of, a-and I don’t mean no  _ seriously  _ troublesome trouble, I’m talking just some light shenanigans, ya know? Completely harmless, like in that movie, ‘The Hangover!’”

“Yeah, harmless, except for our dignity. Hey, gimme your bandanna.”

“Am I gonna get it back?”

“...Probably not.”

“No. Use yours.” 

“Mine was a gift from Riley--”

“Yeah, and so was mine! Remember? She got us matching bandannas. Use your damn shirt. I used mine. Anyway, I was sayin’...” Jack continued over Mac’s low grumbles. “Vegas, man. It’s gonna happen. Someday.” 

Jack started to click his tongue, a giant wheel of topics spun in his head as he tried to avoid looking at the dart that Mac had left on the ground. It felt like staring at a knife that was about to slice through his skin, staring at a bullet that was going to be loaded and fired into his heart. He didn’t want to think about it.

“If we get out of here, that is. No, not  _ if, when,  _ cause you’re gonna get us out of here. I know you will.”

“You put a lot of faith in me, Jack.”

_ Sometimes I worry too much.  _ Mac kept to himself.

“I gotta, man, what’s a partnership without a basic level of trust? I’ve trusted you ever since you saved our asses in the sandbox, about...well, again, more times than I can count. The amount of nickels for that alone would probably buy us the tickets to Vegas. Really, Mac, that mind of yours is something else. I’d be in a much worse place without you around, I mean that, brother, a-and I’m not just saying that cause I’m standing on the prezipiss--”

“ _ Precipice.” _

If he was taking time to correct Jack, must mean he’s getting close, Jack’s heart soared.

“Close enough--of death. My trust, no, not even just my trust, my  _ faith  _ in you is one hundred percent genuine and unconditional. I believe in you, Mac. And I believe that you’re gonna--”

“Got it!”

“Get-us-out-of-this--WHOO!” Jack cheered, clapped his hands together, though he still kept his foot firm on the plate until Mac would give him the final release, which would come in the form of a final thumbs up, as Mac hunched over, half in pain, half in relief that he had been able to disarm the trap. Jack peeled his foot off the plate with a snail’s pace, as Mac leaned back and ran a hand through his hair. 

“Mac, I’m telling you, I love--”

Or so he thought. 

Jack’s words were cut off by a swift  _ vhoomp-- _ well,  _ multiple vhoomps-- _ that accompanied the wall of darts that slammed into his back, at varying speeds and varying intensity, causing Jack's body to bend in a a backwards arch, his hands twitching, his body frozen in an awkward position. A pained scream rose from the depths of his lungs, sucked all the air out of his body, echoed and reverberated through the ruins and into the future, where Mac could not escape them. 


End file.
